Baby It's Cold Outside

Pinspired Challenge #2 is to use this image for inspiration for a project:

I originally planned to incorporate some stars and hearts, in addition to the snowflakes, but my first design was just too busy. I settled on the snowflakes instead. I stamped a Hero Arts snowflakes stamp with Memento Bahama Blue ink onto Bazzill white cardstock. I let the ink dry a little, and then sprinkled some silver embossing powder over the snowflakes. I brushed a little of the powder away, to make sure you could still see the blue underneath. Then heated it up and added a sentiment from Sweet Stamp Shop to finish it off.

The overall card layout is based on a card by Julie Ebersole as part of the Clean and Simple Card Making 2 online class I'm currently taking. Her card used a dogwood image, seems to work well for snowflakes too!  I had lots of fun making this card, hope you've enjoyed seeing it!

Squeeze-A-Palooza #4 - Valentine's Day

Back from vacation and back to crafting! I need to get moving on some Valentine's Day cards so here's one I made today for Fresh Squeezed Stamps Squeeze-A-Palooza #4. The heart image is from the FSS "The Sweet Life" stamp set. I stamped it several times with Memento tuxedo black ink on some Bazzill white cardstock and did a little masking to make some layers. I then colored some of the hearts with my AC Stamp Markers. The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn's "And a Partridge".

I got the idea for the look of falling hearts from this blog post over at lime doodle.

You've got a few days left to join in the Squeeze-A-Palooza fun, if you don't own any Fresh Squeezed Stamps, they've got a couple free digis for you!

And if you happen to like my card, head on over to this post and hit 'Like' underneath my card ;) 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
 

Love You Valentine

I'm planning to make some small sized Valentines for my daughter's daycare class and teachers.  I don't have a design in mind quite yet, but I'll let you know.  In the meantime I found some Valentine inspiration this week with the Authentique Paper January Sketch Challenge and the Scrapbook Steals Monday Craft Madness #8 theme: Valentines! I'm also entering this into the Authentique January Inspiration Color Challenge.

The strips of paper for the base of the card came together easily (approx 1/2" x 4"), but then I struggled to add something that would pop for a banner and sentiment. I found a scrap of black paper from October Afternoon and punched 1.5" circles to stand out against all the pinks on the card base, and added a pink circle with the "love you" sentiment to then stand out from the black. I strung the banner up with twine, rather than gluing down the circles. I attached the banner with glitter heart brads and added a little doodling around the perimeter to finish it off.

Authentique supplies used:

   'Uncommon' 6x6 patterned paper

   Card base: Foundations paper

Other supplies:

   October Afternoon Woodland Park

   Sweet Stamp Shop sentiment

   WRMK baker's twine

   Recollections heart brads

-Michele

S.W.A.T. - New Challenge Blog starts Feb 2nd

I am so excited to announce that I'll be designing for S.W.A.T., a brand new challenge blog starting up on February 2nd! S.W.A.T. stands for Scrap Warriors Advanced Training - fun name, huh? Here's the link, and you can start following right now!

Here is what you can expect from S.W.A.T.:

Drills:

We have 2 Drills (challenges) per month. With each drill there will a prize that has been has donated by an amazing sponsor!

Drills are issued on the first and third Saturday of each month and you will have until the 25th of each month to add your project to each drill using the Mr. Linky! A winner will be selected from both drills at the end of the month. If you participate in both challenges you double your chances of being a winner!

Basic Training:

Our Lieutenant will take you through your Basic Training the second Saturday every month. This training is to build up your skills and show you some new tips and tricks. With each training session we will challenge you to use your new skills for the chance at becoming our Featured SWAT Girl, which will be chosen from all the participants. Projects must be linked up to Mr Linky by the end of each month to be considered.

Special Ops Training:

Our Captain will push your skills to new limits with Special Ops Training on the fourth Saturday of every month. Be pepared to go "off the page" with altered items, 3-Dimensional projects, and step-by-step tutorials. You won't believe it until you see it so make sure you stop in!

BasicGrey Cards and Paper Smooches

I have a couple cards today that I made with BasicGrey's Konnichiwa collection. These papers really have some gorgeous patterns and colors. Most of the supplies actually came out of one of my Paper Made Bakery card kits. 

First off, I made this one using the 'Designer Draft' sketch over at the Paper Smooches SPARKS challenge blog. I'm totally new to Paper Smooches stamps and don't own any yet, so I used one of their free digi stamps, and did some paper piecing with the blue and orange BG papers. The sentiment is a Pebbles rub-on.

My next card was based on a sketch right from the BasicGrey blog. I had a sort of happy accident with this one. I first stamped the "Love" character in brown Memento ink. But I felt like it didn't stand out enough after putting the whole card together. So I stamped over it again with black ink, and since the tag is popped up on the card I couldn't get a nice even image. But the black on top of the brown has kind of nice distressed effect - love it!  (By the way, that cute 'Love' stamp is from Sweet Stamp Shop.)

Unity Friends with Flair and Birthday Card Swap

I decided to link up with Unity Friends with Flair this week. Thanks for stopping by!

My scrappy friends and I are doing a card swap. Send in 10 cards and get 10 different cards back. When I do swaps like this I usually send in 10 completely different designs. Even when I do batches of Christmas cards they all end up quite different. I guess I get bored with the same design over and over again. This time I found a design I didn't mind repeating, though you will see that each card is still unique!

Here's the base card design, using Unity's itty bitty image and sentiment "Fabulous Girl". I used some ledger paper as the card background, so I'm also linking this project up to the Paper Girls Challenge blog.

And here are all 10 cards.

While I had my supplies out I made a matching gift card holder. 

 

Be sure to leave a comment if you'd like to be part of the Unity drawing for a prize this week.

Scrap Your Stash - Brads

Two Peas in a Bucket has short scrapbooking videos by their Garden Girls just about every day. I love them because they are only 10-15 minutes long, and are free! Last week's 'Scrap Your Stash' video included a challenge to use brads in a new or unique way on a project. Well, I've got these rather large polka-dot brads (1" diameter) and haven't figured out yet how to use them!

Since the brads are so big, I decided to try to use them as the focus of a card, rather than just an accent. Here's what I came up with:

I've used Unity stamps for the flower stems, some paper scraps from Echo Park, Bo Bunny and AC cardstock bases, WRMK twine, sentiments by Sweet Stamp Shop and those cute brads are now the flowers.

-Michele

Pretty Painting

I saw this sketch at Paper Secrets and thought it would work really well for 2 photos I have of my daughter painting.

With an artsy subject like this and the paint colors in the pictures I had to pair them with some Amy Tangerine 'Sketchbook' papers and embellishments. I love how it turned out, and it was so fun to use all these bright colors together! I used ledger paper for the background of the layout, so I'm going to enter this in the current Paper Girls challenge as well.

While I had my supplies out, I made this card. I really should do this more often. This time I decided to color in one of the 'Sketchbook' doodles and make it the focus of the card.

When deciding on colors and papers, I went with the gorgeous colors and cute polka dots found in this inspiration photo for the Pinspired Challenge #1.

Thanks for looking at my projects today!

ScrapbookSteals.com guest sketcher

Happy New Year!  I'm having a fantastic start to 2013 by being this month's guest sketcher over at scrapbooksteals.com today! I rely heavily on sketches to make my scrapbook layouts and cards, so it was both fun and a little challenging to do my own thing with the Lawn Fawn Bright Side Collection.

Here's a little peek at my layout and these pretty papers:

Now, go check out my sketch and play along this week!  You have until Monday, January 7th at 11:59 pm MST to link up your layout.

-Michele